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In his acclaimed work Danube, Claudio Magris painted a vast canvas stretching from the source of the river to the Black Sea. Now he focuses on the tiny borderlands in Istria and Italy, where he was born and where he has lived most intensely. From the forests of Monte Nevoso to the hidden valleys of the Tyrol to a Trieste cafe, Microcosms pieces together a mosaic of stories -- comic, tragic, picaresque, nostalgic -- from life's minor characters. Their worlds might be small, but they are far from minimalist: in them flashes the great, the meaningful, the unrepeatable significance of every existence. Magris is a profoundly original modern writer. With its illuminating, elegant prose, Microcosms, like Danube, is destined to become a classic of travel literature.
Rarely has a one word title so well reflected the contents of such an intricate book. The microcosms that the author reveals in such a rich and poetic prose are those of his homeland, the lands that lie between the eastern Alps and the Adriatic, centred cultrally on Trieste but historically fragmented by a millennia of fluid borders. It is the epitome of Europe, each area painfully distinct in geography and people. Divided and diverse, these lands retain a character that has defied the finality of the nation state's remorseless historical progress. It is these contradictions that the author tries to resolve as he leaves the tables of Trieste's faded cafe society. From the dark, wooded slopes of Mount Nervoso the narrative travels down isolated Tyrolean valleys, crossing the Po valley to skim the surface of the tranquil lagoons east of Venice before reaching out across the crystal-clear Adriatic to the archipeligo of islands that litter its coast. An exploration of people as much as landscape, this is a lyrical travel book, filled with anecdote and history, revealing the minutiae of life of a people sidelined and divided by history. (Kirkus UK)
